1-54 Forum London

14 - 17 October 2021

The Virtual Salon

The digital, the virtual, the augmented, the real, the imagined; A.F.K versus I.R.L—the lexicon around our digital world both perplexes and invigorates ‘our’ collective consciousness. In the western world, debates of African digitality often summon references to ‘digital divides’ and social inequity. The reality, in many instances, contrarily exhibits a much more complex picture. Internet diffusion across the continent has proliferated at warp speed across the last decade, enabling an entirely new generation of artists and makers to explore the possibilities of digitality in motion. Here, artists have produced a multitude of virtual forms and artefacts; NFTs, memes, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Within these interstitial spaces, creative practitioners have found tools that have enabled new forms of expression—an agency that enables independently-driven storytelling techniques that embody queer, feminist alter-narratives to breathe in open space. Princess Alia al-Senussi, PhD (Cultural strategist, writer, patron, public speaker and academic) leads a discussion with Osinachi (Artist), Sumayya Vally (Principal Architect, Counterspace), Gemma Rolls-Bentley (Chief Curator, Avant Arte) and Tinie Tempah (Rapper and Singer).

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